Channeling Ben Hogan: How eFiling Helps Improve Court Data Entry

One of the classic urban legends of golf goes like this: An amateur once asked, I believe, Ben Hogan, “How can I increase my percentage of one-putts?” To which Hogan famously replied, “Hit your approach shot close to the hole.”

With that broad hint, consider the following trick question:

Question: What is the best strategy for managing court data entry?

Answer: A) Improve speed.

B) Improve accuracy.

C) Reduce Cost.

D) None of the above

E) All of the above (including “D”)

The correct answer, of course, is E. The best strategy for managing court data entry is — Stop doing it.

Hogan’s point was not that there aren’t better ways to make a putting stroke. And you can believe Hogan knew them all. His point was, the object of the game is not to hole long putts. The object is to hit fewer strokes. Improve your putting stroke all you can; it’s still not as good as having a gimmee after your approach shot.

Likewise, while there are lots of ways to improve court data entry, the objective is to get the information into the court’s data base in a timely manner with as little effort, cost, and chance of error as possible. In golf, if you can get the ball in the hole without putting (as, say, with a hole-in-one), that’s considered pretty darn good. For courts, getting data into data bases without data entry is also pretty darn good.

Enter robust, full-featured electronic filing with workflow. I don’t have to take a position on the question of what constitutes the best or most important aspect of court e-filing. In golf, some golfers need work on their long game; some on their wedges, etc. For some courts, cost savings will be most important; for some it will be speed and efficiency; for some it may even be raising revenue by charging attorneys, who benefit greatly from being able to e-file. I certainly do not minimize the importance of these and numerous other benefits. But whatever the primary benefit, removing the data entry burden from court staff unarguable gets the ball closer to if not in the hole.

When correctly implemented, e-filing constitutes a win-win situation when it comes to data management. In today’s world, virtually every document that is filed (at least by attorneys) is created in electronic format. Thus, just for starters, the e-filer does not (absent anachronistic rules; a topic for another day) need to print out copies to file. While it may be necessary to enter address, type, and other meta-data in particular places to effect e-filing, this is NOT meta-data that the filer wasn’t already entering in the first place. In other words, the tasks on the front end may look different (to the extent they are still necessary); but they are not additional or new.

On the court (receiving) end, though, the difference is dramatic. E-filing with workflow can reduce the court staff’s data entry tasks to quality control — analogous to a six-inch putt instead of a thirty-footer.

Over the past several years, many courts have followed a “staged” approach to implementing Electronic Content Management (ECM) in which the first stage is to move internally to ECM while still receiving filed documents as paper, then scanning them into the court’s ECM system. As an implementation strategy, this often makes a lot of sense. It’s sort of like learning to get real good at “lag” putting, to leave the long putts close to the hole.

For such courts, moving quickly on to e-filing should be a top priority. You’ve mastered the game; now start leaving the ball next to the hole on your approach shot.